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VICTOR, SALLY 1905-1977

MILLINER

The Dean of Hats

The creator I of many hat fashions, Sally Victor has been called "the dean of American millinery design." Among the best known of her designs are the baby bonnet, the collapsible straw hat, the Flemish sailor hat, the war worker's turban, the Grecian pillbox, and the airwave hat. She received the Fashion Critics Millinery Award in 1943. She was also an ardent advocate of establishing American designers in the fashion world and did much to promote New York as a fashion center.

Getting Started

Born in 1905 in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Victor was one of eight children. When she was two her family moved to New York, where as a teenager she learned to sew her own clothes. In 1926 she took a job as head millinery buyer at Bamberger's, a large New Jersey department store. The following year she married Sergiu F. Victor, head of the wholesale millinery house of Serge, where she soon became the chief designer. In 1934 she opened her own retail millinery salon. The Sally Victor salon prospered through the Depression due to her originality and shrewd business sense, which helped propel her to the headlines during World War II When materials were in short supply during the war she refused to depend on textile manufacturers, instead experimenting with any fabrics she could acquire, often dying and weaving them in her salon to get the effects she desired.

Establishing American Designs

With the fall of Paris in 1940 Victor saw an opportunity to strengthen the position of American fashion design. Toward that end, in 1942 she and two other prominent hat designers, Lily Dache and John Frederics, worked together at the request of the millinery industry to create fall and winter trends in hats. Their hats were labeled "Millinery Fashion Inspiration, Inc.," and were very successful. Victor also designed a beret for the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps and a denim work hat for General Electric that had an adjustable hood of fabric that confined the long hair of women workers, preventing accidents.